Just like his sport, Coe’s credibility is at an all-time low

LORD COE places a lot of store in credibility. He talked yesterday of whether Russian athletes could credibly return to competition, having decided they could not. He spoke of undermining the confidence of competitors and public, and sounded very convincing as he did so. Yet Coe’s credibility is also at an alltime low right now.

What did he know? What did he want to know? Most importantly, how could a man who appears bare-faced as the champion of clean sport, appear to have been so disconnected with the subject less than a year ago?

How could he not even click a button to see the evidence of corruption; how could he treat a trusted friend so casually; how could he remain in touch with those at the very heart of the scandal?

When evidence of systemic corruption in Russian athletics broke, Coe’s default position was to question it. ‘These so-called experts,’ he said, ‘give me a break. I know who I would believe.’

Eight months on, who do we believe is a question Coe dare not ask. He sat at the IAAF press conference in Vienna yesterday to answer questions on the — correct — decision to uphold the ban on Russian athletics for the duration of the Olympics. But more than ever it is the president’s own reputation at stake.

Coe has emerged appallingly from this latest round of revelations. The faith in him as an individual, or as the man best placed to reform athletics has all but gone. Does anyone believe what he did or did not know? Does anyone believe what he did or did not open?

Does anyone believe the benign nature of his relationship with Papa Massata Diack, a man accused of corruption? Does anyone believe Coe’s absence of curiosity in the dark recesses of his sport? Does anyone believe Coe is still the man to change athletics?

It should have been a good day for Coe yesterday. The IAAF took a strong, admirable stance on Russia’s systematic doping. It was the strongest message the organisation has sent and Coe delivered it well.

He said he would be attending a meeting of the IOC in three days to ensure the IAAF’s stance on Russian athletes was robustly represented and their decision could not be watered down.

In those moments he sounded exactly the man to take on the cheats. And then they came: the questions for Coe that called his conduct to account, the same way he had challenged Russian athletics.

There are so many smoking guns in the sport right now, it is hard to see across the room. Yet the one in the hands of David Bedford, the man who wrote the fateful email warning Coe of the corruption at the heart of the IAAF, subsequently exposed by this newspaper, may yet have fired a fatal bullet.

Bedford ( below) told the Evening Standard newspaper yesterday that he had warned Coe of the email’s contents before sending it. This undermines, utterly, Coe’s explanation that on seeing the brief summation of the contents in the subject bar, he simply forwarded it to the appropriate department.

‘The conversation probably went, I asked Seb if he knew about it and he said “No”,’ said Bedford. ‘I said, “I’ll forward you this documentation because someone at a very senior level needs to know about it”.’

Increasingly, this places Coe in an untenable position. How could he not have taken interest if informed of the email’s contents? It is a very modern excuse, the failure of electronic communication. Yet if we are to believe Lord Coe, then why not Maria Sharapova over drug-taking or James Murdoch’s apparent cluelessness around phone-hacking.

The mitigations amount to the same thing: I was sent an email but I didn’t open it.

AND who hasn’t done that? Yet Coe was not receiving circulars. He was not some anonymous name on a large group of recipients. This was a personal missive from a respected figure in the world of athletics, a man Coe would have known for a long time, and he knew what it was about. Yet Coe’s interest was not piqued. Not even a little bit. He passed it on to what he considered the appropriate department and went about his day.

Yet Coe did not always suffer such an absence of curiosity.

When Papa Diack got in touch via text message, for instance, he was very responsive, thanking him on numerous occasions for his counsel and assistance in the run-up to his election as IAAF president and keen to do his bidding. ‘ Leave the doping mantra,’ Diack tells him in one text. ‘It’s a bad platform for your campaign.’ ‘Will do!’ announces Coe, obediently. Diack can be placed at the heart of Russian corruption.

So Coe’s problem, and if anything the perception is growing stronger, is that he is not a reformer: he is an insider. He has been within the corridors of power in international athletics for close to a decade now and referred to disgraced former president Lamine Diack as ‘my spiritual leader’.

It transpires Diack Snr had led athletics only into a mire of corruption, in which cheating athletes paid money to hide positive tests. Diack didn’t just siphon money from his sport, he put known cheats on the starting line and Papa, his son, is implicated in that process.

Yet throughout his election campaign Coe stayed close to Papa as an influence within athletics. He says he was ‘civil yet wary’ — but he doesn’t sound wary in the many exchanges that have subsequently surfaced.

Unlike Bedford, whose email went unopened, Coe always had time for Papa, grateful for his advice on many occasions.

Diack at one stage tells Coe that he can rely on 24 of the 30 African votes. Coe was elected by a majority of 23.

SO yesterday the questions tumbled out: had he misled the parliamentary select committee about what he knew? Were they going to recall him? Could he clarify the Bedford conversation? How detailed was it? Would he consider his position? Would he refer himself to the IAAF ethics commission?

And the big one, the one that he can’t answer without sounding either duplicitous or dopey: why wasn’t he interested? Why didn’t he want to know?

Coe was desperately unconvincing on these issues. He said Bedford came with allegations but no detail, he was sketchy about where they met. ‘I have thousands of conversations,’ he said, ‘ sometimes there are rumours, sometimes allegations.’ He added that is why he told everyone to send what they knew to the IAAF ethics board. And that is what he did with Bedford’s email.

Yet Bedford isn’t some random yahoo; he isn’t some nutter, pulling at his lapels on the late-night bus, button-holing Coe with the latest half-baked gossip from the trackside.

He is a respected figure in the sport, the former director of the London Marathon, an OBE in 2014. Coe’s actions treat him like a stranger. It makes no sense. Bedford said yesterday that he still saw Coe as the man to lead athletics. That made no sense, either.

Coe spoke yesterday like a man who cares passionately about eradicating cheats, yet his behaviour argues otherwise. All of it makes no sense. And, increasingly, like Coe, the public know who they believe,

too.